Dave Kellogg uncovers a big myth about management by objective and objective key results that will have you thinking about the entire job scope next time your discussing objectives. The Single Biggest Myth about MBOs and OKRs — 3 minutes

David Lynch talks about the dilemmas product engineers face when it comes to progress over perfection and speed over safety, and that there's a certain level of uncertainty that exists in these dilemmas ... uncertainty that should be embraced. Move fast and optimize for the long-term — 8 minutes

Meme of the week

As the PyeongChang Olympics continue, young athletes – coming from the millennial generation – continue to perform and put on an impressive show. Red Gerard, born in 2000, may have won the most millennial gold medal ever ... just take a look at the highlights that led to, and followed, his Olympic win:

Mike Reynolds uses Slack as an example to show how B2B SaaS Sales is shifting to B2U (Business-to-User) and what adjustments you should make to get started. The Future of B2B Software is B2U — 7 minutes

Tim Copp looks at the role of Marketing and how their main goal should be to help Sales hit their goals, rather than all the ancillary things that don't allow you see the forest from the trees. Marketing as an Accountable Revenue Function6 minutes

Mike Preuss encourages you to include PQLs in your organization as a way to increase alignment. Product team focused on building a great product, sales team focused on highly qualified leads, and the marketing team dynamically nurturing leads. Win-win-win. Pull Levers in your Sales Funnel with Product Qualified Leads — 7 minutes

Jason Lemkin gives advice on how to deal with one of the most frustrating things for a growing company: a long sales cycle on a big deal. How to Cope With Long Sales Cycles — 4 minutes

Tomasz Tunguz explains how running an effective meeting boils down to respect for the time of others and so preparation is key. Meetings Shouldn't Be Boring — 3 minutes

Meme of the week

If you're a fan of the expert interview series on the FunnelCake blog, you know that we end every conversation talking about '90s dance songs, because ... why not? As a present to you loyal newsletter subscribers, here are all the best answers we've come across in our interviews in one handy Spotify playlist – enjoy :)

Ben Wiener looks at the elusive goal of finding product-market fit and how making something people want is not enough, but rather something they desperately want. Why is Product/Market Fit So Freaking Hard? — 3 minutes

Brian Balfour walks through numerous cases where startups gain massive traction, raise huge amounts of capital, just to shut down a short time later, and how retention seems to be the silent killer in many of these cases. Why Retention Is The Silent Killer — 12 minutes

Meme of the week

Popular card game company – Cards Against Humanity – has because synonymous with outrageous holiday Marketing campaigns, and Christmas 2017 is no different releasing this tweet last week.

If you're wondering if this is for real, wonder no longer – it is. Prongles have replaced Cards Against Humanity card sets in retail stores across the nation. For how long? Who knows, but for now, go out and grab yourself some Original Prongles. Once You Pop... THAT'S GREAT!

What we're reading

Jonathan Solórzano-Hamilton tells an interesting story about Rick, your top contributor, and how your team's strength is not about individual talent, but a function of collaboration, tenacity, and mutual respect. We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made. — 8 minutes

Tomasz Tunguz put together an interesting piece on the SaaS industry and how it's become commodified with easy-to-use infrastructure, playbooks that we all follow, and rising customer acquisition costs. He goes on to explain that this isn't a bad thing – not at all – but an opportunity. Has SaaS Become Commodified? — 3 minutes

Michel Feaster shares a story of how Usermind was created and how digging deep into your industry to find the most painful changes and connecting the dots is the key to creating (and owning) a new category of software.Creating a Enterprise Software Category — and Owning It — 5 minutes

Ryan Law and Emily Smith looked at the top 250 most successful SaaS companies to create The State of SaaS Content Marketing 2017. There's a number of great stats in here worth checking out. The State of SaaS Content Marketing 2017 — 12 minutes

Tracy Eiler talks with The Pedowitz Group about what it means to be a "T-shaped" marketer, where you should focus efforts in the funnel, and specific changes to make within your organization to get Sales and Marketing better aligned. CMO Insights: Tracy Eiler, Chief Marketing Officer, InsideView — 15-minute video

What we're reading

Lance Jones and Joanna Wiebe put clever marketing vs. clear marketing messages to the test running three ad variations of the same service; one very clear, one looking to trigger an emotional response, and one clever one aimed to crack a smile. Check out which was most effective – you may be surprised 😮The Great Copy Debate: Clear Vs. Clever — 7 minutes

Omidyar Network talked with Mandy Cole, former VP of Sales at Zenefits, about building a kickass Sales team and common mistakes many companies make along the way.The Playbook To Scaling Sales — 11 minutes

Meme of the week

If you haven't heard, there's a solar eclipse tomorrow (Monday). If you're lucky enough to live along the path it travels, you'll have the chance to see the Total Solar Eclipse. Don't worry if you're not – you'll have a partial view (still very cool).

If you haven't bought special eclipse glasses yet, it's too late, they're sold out everywhere – something myself and the FunnelCake team learned earlier this week. Anyways, here's a DIY option.

David Skok, along with The Bridge Group, gathered an extensive amount of data on the role of the Account Executive to use as a benchmark to compare your sales numbers against. How do you stack up?Bridge Group 2017 SaaS AE Metrics Report — 10 minutes

Meme of the week

🎶 Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? 🎶

🔊 SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS! 🔊

That's right, this week's meme is about the adorable pair of Spongebob and his best pal Patrick, debatably the best cartoon pair to ever appear on Nickelodeon. They've brought children everywhere countless laughs ever since the show debuted in May of 1999.

Well, 3D artist Miguel Vasquez went ahead and created what the pair would look like in real life. The results? Well, not so adorable ...

For photos of Miguel's work, and to see the hilarious Twitter reaction, go here.

John Rode breaks down what sales capacity is, and why it's imperative to build into your plan the time it takes to get from "we need to hire more reps" to those reps being fully ramped up. What's Really Driving Your Sales Capacity? — 4 minutes

Meme of the week

Instead of going for a funny meme this week, we've got something that is ... out of this world.

Basically, the Juno probe was launched back in 2011, and it orbits around Jupiter collecting information about its atmosphere and structure. Every so often, Juno dips into low altitude starts to collects photos.

NASA released those images earlier this month and German mathematician, Eichstaedt, went to work putting the photos together into a breathtaking video that you need to watch.

ICYMI: May 28, 2017

What we wrote

The RevOps Framework

Over the past twelve months, FunnelCake interviewed over a hundred B2B Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success leaders. With that data, we created the definitive framework for Revenue Operations – a new department that manages full funnel operations across the customer lifecycle.

What we're reading

Andrew Gaffney goes through the new Demand Waterfall introduced by SiriusDecisions this past week. The new framework features an increased focus on buying groups, rather than the progression of individual leads or inquiries.SiriusDecisions Unveils New Demand Waterfall Model — 4 minutes

Dave Koslow talks about how Sales has gotten complicated, very complicated. From Sales leadership to Sales Ops, there is so much data coming from different tools, it's difficult for Sales to actually focus on selling. How Sales Got So Complicated (and What to Do About It) — 6 minutes

Tomasz Tunguz does a phenomenal job giving a quick walk-through on how to calculate bookings capacity for the Sales team. It's one thing to write a number down, but another to plan out how it's going to happen. Hiring For Bookings Capacity In Sales — 2 minutes

Meme of the week

This week's meme comes from a photo taken in 2014 at a Miu Miu fashion show with Rihanna and Lupita Nyong'o.

Last month, a Twitter user posted the photo with the caption, "Rihanna looks like she scams rich white men and Lupita is the computer smart best friend that helps plan the scans [sic]." Even with the typo, the post went viral.

Then, a Twitter exchange happened between the two of them showing their interest in making it happen.

What makes this even better? Netflix jumped on the idea and landed the project that will star both Rihanna and Lupita Nyong'o. The untitled movie will be directed by Ava DuVerynay, with Issa Rae in talks to write.

David Skok identifies a third crucial startup skill: recruiting. This is the first post in an on-going series focusing on recruitment processes to find and sell passive candidates on your business. Part 1: Top of the Funnel — Sourcing — 11 minutes

Meme of the week

We all remember Lil' Bow Wow, right? The cute little 13-year old hip-hop sensation from 2000.

Well, there's now something called the Bow Wow challenge, a social media challenge that has taken over similar to the mannequin challenge of 2016.

You may ask, how did this start?

Bow Wow, like most of us, made the attempt to make his life look a little cooler than it actually was in a recent Instagram post. Too bad for Bow Wow, he was exposed on Snapchat showing that he was actually travelling coach with the rest of us common folk.

The challenge: post a picture online showing something deceptively aspirational, followed by the reality of what it actually is and include #BowWowChallenge.

For more on the story, and examples of the best #BowWowChallenge so far, go here.

What we're reading

Lena Shaw explains the current state of Sales and Marketing stacks with companies invested in a number of siloed tools and platforms, and how in 2017 we should be looking to trim down with "best of breed" tools that should lead to better efficiency through the funnel. Making MarTech Consolidation Work for Your Business — 3 minutes

Ayaz Nanji points out the top three Sales challenges of 2017; too much time on non-sales activities, finding the right assets to assist in their sale, and spending time with prospects and clients. The Top Sales Challenges of 2017 — 2 minutes

Jim Brodo explains something that almost all of us have experienced: marketing fatigue. You know, like when you download some content and in return your inbox and voicemail gets filled up. Jim includes five marketing strategy areas to reconsider in order to avoid giving your prospects marketing fatigue. Your Buyers Are Experiencing Marketing Fatigue; Here's What to Do About It — 9 minutes

Casey Renner talks with Joe Sexton about preparing a startup sales organizations for going public. Great tips in here about sales enablement, using a formula-driven approach to scaling, and that everything starts and ends with the customer.Preparing Your Sales Org to Go Public — 13 minutes

Tomasz Tunguz tackles the tricky question of how to structure the compensation sales teams should get and how developing sales motions, customer success sophistication, and compensation structures to enable growth is a key area for a SaaS businesses. How Much To Compensate SaaS Sales Teams — 4 minutes

Meme of the week

On Wednesday, Beyoncé shared a photo of herself pointing at a menu, and (as expected) the internet did it's thing and quickly repurposed it into a quality meme.

First Round Review explains that have the data to tell the difference between vanity metrics and sanity metrics, but it comes down to having the discipline to focus on what matters. I’m Sorry, But Those Are Vanity Metrics — 19 minutes

David Heinemeier Hansson makes a guest appearance o the "Everyone Hates Marketers" podcast to talk about the language of B******t. This is pretty entertaining, give it a listen. E001 – DHH – The Language of B******t — One hour listen

Meme of the week

It's been a busy week, but this one tweet summarizes it pretty well ...

What we're reading

Steve Woods encourages us to stop thinking about selling to a company, but rather the employees within that company. Shift the focus away from "they" and put on "him/her" and the message that will resonate with them specifically. Turbocharge Account Based Sales by Removing One Word — 3 minutes

Doug Kessler writes an interesting article about the marketing data lake, similar to a data warehouse, but with some important differences that apply directly to marketers. The rise of the marketing data lake — 5 minutes

Marc Eglon explains how to find the ideal price for your product, different pricing options/strategies, how to pitch your price once you've settled on one, freemium options, and... pretty much anything to do with pricing strategies that you can think of. The ultimate sales guide to setting and discussing pricing — 24 minutes

Meme of the week

This week's meme is about one of the most controversial topics of all-time. You either use it or don't, love it or hate it... there is no in between. Of course, I'm talking about the Oxford comma, quite possibly the most polarizing punctuation marks in existence.

In recent news out of Maine, the Oxford comma has caused quite a stir with group of truck drivers that are suing their employer, Oakhurst Dairy, for over 4 years worth of overtime pay.